After Life
by inalasahl
Summary: Zoe can choose only one moment to take with her into the afterlife. Premise from the 1998 Japanese movie of the same title.


Thanks be to llaras for the beta.

**----**

dai ruo mu ji dumb as a wooden chicken

---

When you hear that you have to pick one moment of your life to take with you, just one thing to sum up all that you are and were and ever hoped to be, you know immediately what you want. "Wash," you say. "Something with Wash."

Your social worker, Mr. Au-Yong, presses a few keys on his reader to refresh his memory. "That is your late husband, ma'am?"

"Yes."

----

Zoe tensed in the midst of so many people milling about. Mal was the one who liked crowds. Zoe preferred to keep her back to the wall. Captain was dai ruo mu ji for insisting on this, and he would suffer for it when she got back to Serenity.

He hadn't offered her a choice, just told her that if she wanted to eat she had to let him go set up the job, which meant she was stuck babysitting the pilot on his shopping trip. The space station wasn't exactly reaver space or even a lawless rim outpost. The pilot ought to be able to take care of himself.

"Trouble has a way of finding my crew," Mal asserted, and Zoe had to agree. Still, she thought the new mechanic and the pilot together ought to be able to take care of themselves in a place like this.

"Kaylee's got repairs to do. She ain't no dab hand with a gun neither. It's not what I hired her for, and it is why I hired you. Now it's long past time you learned to get along with the man. He can do everything he claimed he could, and don't think I don't 'preciate that, how some of my hiring decisions worked themselves out." He shrugged. "Sides, I think he's sweet on you." Zoe glared. "It's cute. Don't you think it's cute?" Mal smirked. "Is it the moustache? 'Cause he could shave it off ..."

"It's not the moustache," Zoe snapped. "Just something about him."

"Maybe you're sweet on him, too." Mal laughed, because nothing could be farther from the truth.

Items purchased, they ought to have been heading back to the ship, but somehow the pilot had discovered that the space station housed a midway and had insisted on dragging her down the length of it. There was standing one's ground, and there was attracting attention, so for now she chose the better part of valor, in mute accompaniment. She wasn't going to shoot him. Not even a little bit. It was her job to see that he didn't come to any harm. Mal, though ... on that score she made no guarantees.

Wash stopped suddenly in front of a booth where you had to hit a clown's paper nose three times to win a stuffed animal. "Hey, look," he said. "They got dinosaurs." He stepped up to the booth, pulling Zoe with him.

"Five credits for three balls," the barker said. "Three hits wins the bottom row." He looked at the two of them expectantly.

"Well?" Wash said impatiently.

"Well, what?" Zoe frowned.

"Are you going to win me a dinosaur or not?"

"Am I going to --" It was a complete waste of money, Zoe thought, but her nostrils flared as she in took in Wash's daring smirk. She repressed a growl in her throat and almost before she knew it she had plunked down the creds. She picked up the balls the barker handed her, resisting the temptation to aim them at the pilot, and let fly.

A half-hour later they left the midway, Wash happily cradling a large stuffed dinosaur. "I still say you should have tried for the giant one," he said, glaring at her just a little.

"What would you do with a giant stuffed dinosaur? Besides, that one cost me 20 credits as it was."

Wash shrugged. "I understand if you didn't feel like you could win it for me." He frowned at the dinosaur, smoothing one hand along its fur. "I bet Mal would have --" That was too much for Zoe. She pushed Wash against a bulkhead and licked her way into his mouth. She could feel his lips moving underneath hers, still trying to form words, so she nibbled and sucked until finally Wash caught on and she was being good and thoroughly kissed back.

"No, he wouldn't," she said when the kiss broke long minutes later.

"Who wouldn't what?" Wash said, breathing hard, eyes wide.

"Let's go back to the ship," Zoe said.

"Hey, I'm not easy," Wash cried. "I mean, yes, I'm easy. Of course, I'm that easy--just look at you. But don't think next time you can lure me into bed with another display of athletic prowess and a cheap--"

"Twenty credits!"

"--moderately costly stuffed dinosaur." He waggled his eyebrows. "Next time, I will expect dinner."

---

"Is that what you'd like to choose, ma'am? Your first ... date?"

"No." You can see out of the window that it is snowing. It's strange that a place like this would have weather. Turning away from the window, you study the hands that have become so different from the ones that once won a stuffed dinosaur. These hands are weathered, worn despite your best efforts, wrinkled. You are old now, and that was a lifetime ago. "Maybe. It's tough." You have never felt so indecisive before, but as fond as your memories are of that night, you think you'd like to pick a time after, when you were both in love.

---

Wash's face was bloodless as he stared at the bullet hole in Zoe's shoulder. Mal leaned heavily against her other side, blood dripping from a leg wound.

"I'm fine," she said, squeezing Wash's hand. "I'm fine."

Mal caught the quick movement and his eyes narrowed. "You gonna see about getting us away from the angry people who are probably right now sending a wave to see if there are any cruisers in the area or you gonna stand here ringing your hands like a nursemaid?"

They limped into the infirmary at a snail's pace, both of them grunting a bit by the time they made it. "Who goes first?" Mal groaned, falling into the patient chair.

Zoe flexed her fingers. "My arm works fine. Might not after you dig around in my shoulder."

Mal nodded. "If I pass out before I get to you, just slap me round."

Zoe doped him with a local. "Wouldn't hurt to hire a doctor."

"You like cooking and dish-washing that much?" Mal asked, referring to his intention to hire someone for the galley.

"Not like we got anything other than protein anyway."

"If you'd stop getting shot--"

Wash came back in, forestalling Mal's protests before he could utter them. "We're clear. I've got the proximity sensors on, and Kaylee in the cockpit watching for anything further out." Zoe and Wash hadn't ever talked about keeping things secret, but it had worked out that way. Wash, however, was no longer playing by those rules. "Mal's right," he said. He kissed the crook of her neck. "Stop getting shot."

He was still pale, freckles standing out sharply on his face, his babbling at a minimum. "I'm fine," she told him again, as she stitched Mal up. "Only thing bothers me is I lost my necklace," she said, referring to the leather tie she usually wore.

She could feel how abraded the skin around her neck was, and she knew he probably had a pretty good guess how she'd lost it. "Long as you don't lose your neck," he murmured, moving to hold her hand as she and Mal switched places.

Mal's jaw was clenched, his teeth gritted. Something told Zoe, however, that it wasn't from the pain of having a bullet taken out. He stood on one leg. The local she'd given him made his leg too numb to support weight, but she was still pretty sure it was unnecessary the way he jostled Wash to get at her shoulder. "Thought you thought it was cute," Zoe said, her lips curving upward a bit.

Mal's eyes flicked to Wash, who was all ears. "That was back when I thought he bothered you."

It was about a month later that Wash disappeared on a planetfall to run "errands." When he got back he took Zoe into the cockpit with him, and nudged her backwards, bumping her into the console until she was forced to sit on it, feet dangling. He slumped in his pilot's chair, head at the perfect height to lay itself on her lap. Instead, he swallowed hard, before grinning broadly, leaning back in his chair. He fumbled in his flight jacket. Fingers trembling, he pulled out a new loop of leather. "It's the same as the one you lost." She smiled and lifted it toward her neck. "It's--I can't buy a ring," he said.

Her fingers paused in the work of putting it around her neck. "Wash?"

---

Once you were sure what he was asking, you didn't even have to think about it. You already knew you were in love with him. You'd known for a long time. Your stomach still flutters when you think about those early days.

---

There were a hundred days like it, a thousand moments. You're not sure why this particular time orbiting Ita moon would stay with you all these years. They've done a good job of replicating the old Serenity cockpit. You never realized before how much you missed her or how much it was like losing the last part of Wash. Not even Kaylee could keep her in the sky forever.

You feel only excitement when the cameras start rolling, remembering how you woke up alone and went in search of him, knowing exactly where he'd be. You stood in the doorway just like this, leaning against the frame, watching. They have a recording of his voice, and you forget that it's an actor. You are watching your husband.

A stegosaurus stalks a tyrannosaurus rex across the control panel. "My name is Stego Saurusoya. You killed my father. Prepare to--aaaaah!" That explains the pile of dinosaurs heaped on the floor, you think, as the tyrannosaurus's tail lashes out and the stegosaurus falls to his death, screaming all the way down, and landing with a rather impressive "Ker-SPLAT!"

"Mu-ah-ah-ah," the tyrannosaurus cackles.

You come up behind Wash to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Good morning."

"Mornin'," he replies as one hand comes up to cover yours, warm and broad. The tyrannosaur peers out over the edge of the control panel, surveying the chaos below. "Gorramit," he groans. "I keep forgetting to ask how many kids that rutting stegosaurus had."

It is a good moment to live.

Finis


End file.
